[Featured image: VILA EVOKED Shop Concept]
Key Takeaways:
- High-fidelity renders of digital garments are creating compelling B2B and B2C selling experiences, but comprehensive digital twins can also stand in for their physical counterparts and add value across a wide range of other applications.
- Beyond software adoption, return on investment from 3D and digital product creation strategies will be found in enhancing processes, fostering collaboration, aligning departments, and achieving compounded benefits.
The Potential Of Digital Twins
The integration of digital twins in the fashion industry signifies a transformative shift with the potential to revolutionise various aspects of fashion, spanning from design to presentation. Beyond a mere technological addition, digital twins could present a groundbreaking opportunity for the fashion world to redefine the creation process and establish novel ways of engaging customers. However, it’s important to note that seizing these opportunities requires collaborative efforts from brands, their teams, and technology partners.
Moving Beyond Proof Of Concept
Fashion’s transition to making deep use of 3D technology has been a journey filled with both anticipation and challenges. Brands embarked on this path with the promise of enhancing efficiency, reducing costs, and minimising physical samples – and the longer-term goal of further extending the use of digital assets to a range of downstream use cases.
While 3D technology has been available for a while, its successful implementation has taken time. Most fashion brands initially embarked on digital twin exploration through narrow pilot schemes, often confined to a single product category. However, as they progress from this experimental phase to comprehensive integration, it’s becoming increasingly evident that digital twins clearly confirm their value across multiple dimensions of the business. In other words, there has been validation for both the near and longer-term ambitions.
It’s essential to highlight, though, that the true value (and the real return on investment) unfolds when fashion brands move beyond standalone 3D design and fully embrace the concept of a comprehensive digital twin: a digital asset that can act as a stand-in for the physical counterpart in a wide range of different scenarios. This transformative notion presents a unified solution built on a common foundation, with applications ranging from product design and development to sales and customer engagement, offering a new paradigm for the fashion industry.
The excitement surrounding 3D technology often leads to high expectations. Brands anticipate immediate efficiency, creativity, and sustainability gains, but the reality is that transitioning to digital twins is a gradual process. Every brand faces similar challenges, including the need to educate various teams, invest in suitable hardware and software, establish a well-coordinated 3D ecosystem, automate processes, and effectively manage change. Success lies in how these challenges are approached.
It’s essential to remember that 3D impacts various aspects of the business, so taking a step-by-step approach to implementation is key to navigating this transformative journey effectively. But the results in focused areas can be profound, and there are brands that have, for example, pursued high-fidelity visualisation and virtual photography and achieved incredible results in a short timeframe. This is one area that we prioritised at VILA, and I know our entire team is proud of the results – some of which you can see on these pages.
But it’s crucial to balance the appeal of 3D visuals with an understanding of the substantial effort and investment required behind the scenes. There’s a notable difference between using 3D for branding and customer-facing applications, and truly integrating digital product creation into the core business. Unlocking 3D’s complete potential requires dedication to both its ability to captivate people and the more practical, pragmatic aspects. It’s not solely about creating visually striking initiatives; it’s about achieving lasting value by embracing a comprehensive approach to the creation and use of digital assets at scale.
The genuine return on investment in digital product creation and digital twins often arises from enhancing processes, fostering collaboration, aligning departments, and focusing on the compounded benefits of this innovative technology.
Forging Your Own Pathway To DPC
Simultaneously, the path to successful digital twin implementation requires a deep understanding of practical implications, and it is essential to acknowledge that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. What works for one brand or department may differ from what suits another, highlighting the need for a customised approach tailored to the specific needs of each team. Discovering these tailored solutions underscores the
Importance of teamwork and fostering a culture of open communication and collaboration.
Encouraging cross-functional teams to share insights, learnings, and challenges ensures a collective understanding of the transformative journey, laying the groundwork for a successful integration of digital twins. And for each of those teams, having the ability to make decisions based on trust in digital tools and digital assets will not only change the way they work day-to-day but also enable the wider business to be as agile and innovative as it needs to be in order to keep pace with the speed at which fashion is changing.
No Shortcuts To Showcase Quality
While the visible benefits of digital twins may lead to a desire for rapid scaling, it’s crucial to proceed with care to ensure that scaling is done without compromising the quality of digital twins or renderings. Starting with simpler product categories like woven and jersey products allows teams to gain valuable experience in 3D, building expertise in using digital twins effectively.
To advance, it is crucial to establish strong foundations. This involves creating a robust pipeline, a well-structured 3D ecosystem, efficient workflows, comprehensive asset libraries, and clear quality guidelines – all of which are essential to support teams in their efforts to become more productive. Quality standards vary throughout the design and development process, but when digital twins are used for sales to replace photo samples, they must attain the highest quality level possible. Every aspect, inside and out, must be perfected to create a true digital twin.
Elevating Sales With 3D: VILA’s Vision
Fashion’s digital transformation extends well beyond design and development, and this is a vision we take to heart at VILA. Our primary goal is to fully integrate 3D throughout our entire business including marketing and sales, captivating customers, increasing engagement, and meeting performance goals. As a brand with a strong B2B focus, the current emphasis is on seamlessly incorporating 3D into the core of our Digital Sales Strategy. This initiative seeks to create an engaging and customer-tailored sales presentation while saving time and sales samples.
The strategy encompasses two pivotal elements: firstly, top-tier rendered images of digital twins that seamlessly blend with images of physical samples, fostering trust in purchases.This includes rendered packshots and VFX images, presenting 3D garments on real models. Secondly, 3D technology unlocks the potential for more engaging selling tools, such as 360-degree viewers and mix-and-match styling that traditional techniques couldn’t deliver, thereby enriching the customer experience.
Build Trust In Digital Assets
As fashion shifts its focus towards digital sales, the production of high-quality renderings at scale becomes paramount in both consumer-facing and B2B scenarios. These renderings play a crucial role in assuring customers that the virtual representation accurately mirrors the physical product they will receive.
Achieving this level of fidelity requires several critical factors to align perfectly. It starts with a flawless digital twin asset. High-resolution texture scans and print files are essential to replicate the fabric’s realistic appearance, while precise physical properties ensure an authentic drape. The devil lies in the details – trims and finishings must be faithfully reproduced.
The journey doesn’t end here, as once the assets are of the highest quality, we venture into the realm of visualisation. Merging these renderings seamlessly with physical packshots necessitates replicating the photo studio environment in 3D including digital doubles of mannequins, lighting set-up, and camera settings. While it could appear relatively simple on the surface it is, in fact, a complex technical undertaking, and this is where a robust pipeline or 3D ecosystem plays a pivotal role in achieving the right levels of precision and quality.
The Importance Of A 3D Ecosystem
The selection of software, strategic hardware investments, and creative solutions, along with the seamless integration of software choices, serves as a cornerstone of the journey towards both high-fidelity visualisation and deeper use of digital twins. As some fashion companies initially use a single software package for 3D garment creation, transitioning to full-scale digital twin integration downstream quickly reveals the need for a more comprehensive approach. To unlock 3D’s full potential, brands often turn to software solutions from film, VFX, and gaming.
Most of these solutions have built some fashion-specific features on top of best practices gleaned from other sectors, providing effective tools for photorealistic renderings and interactive content. Each software has its unique purpose, and the ultimate goal is to construct a 3D ecosystem that seamlessly supports efficiency and quality. This transition requires well-planned workflows that can accommodate multiple departments without compromising the quality of assets. To ensure efficient workflows, seamless collaboration is vital between 3D and non-3D users, requiring integration between 3D software solutions and existing non-3D software across the company.
Colour Spaces And Shaders
In the realm of 3D rendering, it’s crucial to consider deeper technical aspects such as colour spaces and render engines. Colour spaces impact the way colours are represented and manipulated. These spaces define the range and organisation of colours within digital content, such as RGB, CMYK, or LAB models. Various file formats may interpret and display colours differently, leading to discrepancies between the intended and actual appearances of digital images. This discrepancy can significantly affect the final output, making post-processing efforts ineffective. By establishing a unified colour space workflow, brands and departments ensure that digital images maintain their integrity and consistency throughout the entire process, from creation to the final presentation. This becomes especially crucial as brands utilise more exchange formats and digitalised garments, as it guarantees that the colour spectrum and truth of an image remain unaltered.
Furthermore, each 3D software relies on an integrated render engine, a specialised software that transforms 3D data into visually realistic or stylized images by simulating light interactions with objects and materials, calculating reflection, refraction, absorption, and scattering. These engines are vital for achieving lifelike lighting and shading effects. These render engines are complemented by shaders, low-level GPU programs that define lighting, shading, and other interactions between light and surfaces, determining how material properties are rendered as pixel colours.
The choice of render engine and shaders profoundly influences the visual quality and realism of 3D renderings, making them crucial in the pursuit of the perfect result. And some multi-category brands will even build different pipelines, made of different solutions, to achieve the optimum result for each product type.
Choosing The Right Software
Consideration must be given to each software package’s role and purpose. This includes evaluating the learning curve for the team, the software’s efficiency in daily operations, its ease of maintenance through tech teams, and the availability of extensions or plugins to enhance or streamline the workflow with minimal effort. Given the rapid pace of technological advancements and evolving requirements, it is crucial to implement new solutions non-destructively, ensuring that older workflows remain accessible if necessary. This approach provides a safety net, allowing the flexibility to revert to more stable, but older workflows should new systems face bottlenecks or unforeseen challenges.
Balancing In-House Expertise With External Collaboration
Whether choosing an in-house or outsourcing approach, the key is aligning the strategy with the project’s goals and the desired outcome. For extensive, specialised projects that require rapid scaling, working with external vendors or service providers is often more efficient and cost-effective. These providers possess the specialised knowledge and resources necessary to support such large-scale projects.
While this approach offers growth opportunities, it also comes with certain risks and challenges that require careful navigation. It’s crucial to manage the complexities of exchanging data between different software packages used by providers, highlighting the need for a well-integrated 3D ecosystem. For creative projects, collaborating with external talent can bring fresh perspectives and foster creativity. However, even when working with external teams, it’s valuable to build in-house knowledge to provide creative direction and ensure the desired outcome, as well as laying the foundation for the right talent base in the future. The right mix of in-house expertise and externalcollaboration can unlock the full potential of 3D technology, supporting both creative storytelling and business growth.
Enhancing Brand Communication With 3D Visual Content
By harnessing the potential of Computer Graphics (CG) and Visual Effects (VFX), brands can create compelling stories, whether by digitally designing environments or enhancing real-life footage with 3D elements. 3D storytelling empowers brands to forge profound connections with their audiences, fostering deeper emotional engagement and amplifying the effectiveness of their marketing and sales endeavours.
Furthermore, in synergy with emerging technologies like Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), 3D visual content opens up exciting new possibilities for immersive customer experiences and interactive brand narratives.
Future Outlook
The fashion industry’s journey into the realm of 3D technology and Digital Product Creation (DPC) is not merely a trend but a transformative force that is reshaping the landscape of design, development, and product presentation. The integration of digital twins, high-fidelity renderings, and immersive storytelling is redefining fashion, from product design to marketing and sales.
As the industry steps into this new era, it’s crucial to acknowledge the significant shifts and opportunities that lie ahead. The power of digital twins extends beyond streamlining processes, it empowers brands to communicate and engage with their audiences – in-house, in the value chain, and downstream – in new ways.
The future is promising as technology evolves, and fashion brands explore diverse uses for their 3D assets. Real-time rendering
offers dynamic consumer experiences, while some brands venture into the Metaverse for innovative presentation and selling methods.
Additionally, the fusion of AI and 3D could hold the key to unlocking fresh opportunities. The upcoming path is filled with thrilling possibilities, offering groundbreaking territories for the industry.
However, it’s essential for all stakeholders in the fashion industry to recognise their roles as active participants in this transformation. To harness the full potential of 3D and DPC, brands need to invest in technology, adapt to change, and work proactively to create an ecosystem that fosters collaboration and innovation. It’s not just about following the trend; it’s about shaping the future of fashion through 3D technology. The road ahead is exciting, and it’s up to us to make it a reality and ensure that fashion thrives in the digital age.